Product Description

A new history of counterculture in the UK, from the release of Heartbreak Hotel in 1956 to the passing of the Criminal Justice Act in 1994

`MY BOOK OF THE YEAR... Extraordinary... What a seditious, crackpot, transcendental riot this book is'

Roger Lewis, The Times

Deep in a wood in the Marches of Wales, in an ancient school bus there lives an old man called Bob Rowberry.

A Hero for High Times is the story of how he ended up in this broken-down bus. It's also the story of his times, and the ideas that shaped him. It's a story of why you know your birth sign, why you have friends called Willow, why sex and drugs and rock'n'roll once mattered more than money, why dance music stopped the New-Age Travellers from travelling, and why you need to think twice before taking the brown acid.

It's the story of the hippies for those who weren't there - for Younger Readers who've never heard of the Aldermaston marches, Oz, the Angry Brigade, the Divine Light Mission, Sniffin' Glue, Operation Julie, John Seymour, John Michell,Greenham Common, the Battle of the Beanfield, but who want to understand their grandparents' stories of turning on, tuning in and not quite dropping out before they are gone for ever. It's for Younger Readers who want to know how to build a bender, make poppy tea, and throw the I-Ching.

And it's a story of friendship between two men, one who did things, and one who thought about things, between theory and practice, between a hippie and a punk, between two gentlemen, no longer in the first flush of youth, who still believe in love.

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Author Biography

Ian Marchant is originally from Newhaven in East Sussex, and now lives with his family in the no longer extant Welsh county of Radnorshire. He has published seven books, including the travel/memoirs Parallel Lines, The Longest Crawl and Something of the Night. He is a sometimes presenter of documentaries for BBC Radio, and has appeared numerous times at festivals (including Glastonbury, Secret Garden Party and Wilderness) as one half of semi-legendary hippie cabaret duo 'Your Dad.'

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Deep in a wood in a valley in the Marches of Wales, by an abandoned railway line, there lives an old man called Bob Rowberry. His home is an ancient school bus whose engine has died and whose wheels have fallen off. This is the story of how he ended up in this broken-down bus, in this forgotten part of the world.

Ian Marchant, bon viveur, pub singer and writer, sets off to map the British landscape in drink. This mission takes Ian and his friend Perry on a gruelling month-long pub crawl, from the Turk's Head on the Scilly Isles to the Baa Bar in the Shetlands, taking in many of the British Isles' 60,000 pubs. This British travelogue charts this trip.

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